The paper presents results from a four year study of the economic and ecological potential for implementation of conservation schemes within the rapidly expanding palm oil plantations of South East Asia. Unparalleled access to financial records combined with a highly intensive ecological data gathering exercise allows us to develop spatially explicit cost effectiveness models for optimising conservation efforts. This is integrated with a further study of the price premium potential of conservation-grade palm oil to yield insights into the optimal design of schemes for delivering biodiversity within existing plantations.